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Transcript

Growing Without Growing Apart · Reframe

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reframe, where honest conversations create new possibilities.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're Sarah and Danny, and each week we sit down together to explore life, growth, and everything in between.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, hi.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to be here with you again.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thursdays are becoming my favourite.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna jump on before and be like, Thursdays are becoming the new favourite mornings.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I love what we're doing here.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're just jumping in and in us true us style, seeing where we go, aren't we?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Riffing.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Riffing.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just letting it flow, aren't we?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and that's just how we um how we've been kind of approaching this because when we get together, there's always things, there's always conversations, there's always deep conversations, and we do start to reframe things.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've done this for each other and with each other for a while now since we met, and we just think that it's a a useful thing to share, maybe.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, so we're going to just jump in with whatever's going on for us and whatever we've just been having almost private chats about and see whether um where that goes.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and let's give a little bit of context.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we came onto the call, and I was like, oh, the pressure to find an actual topic to talk about.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And again, in True Us, we started speaking and we've already explored so many different things that we said, let's go live, let's let's do it live in action.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's always insightful and always a pleasure for me to do.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let me try and think about what I just said we should jump on and talk about.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned uh well, we kind of briefly touched on uh feminism.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We touched on uh how that dynamic uh comes into relationships, especially as all beliefs and opinions on those things change.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, both are in longer-term relationships and we grow within relationships, and so we kind of briefly touched on how we navigate that in a relationship, but also the impact on the other person who might not be growing and developing in the same speeds that we are.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a really important thing here that one of the like I've struggled with this.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm coming up to 25 years married, and I have struggled with this a lot through over the years as I've become somebody more aware in self-development and um expanding my awareness of myself and how I impact my life, and then how I then impact other people's lives through my behaviour, my kind of way of seeing things, my perspectives, and that kind of how that plays into a relationship, and always remembering that one thing that you've just said there is that somebody else's journey is going to be different to yours, and it's so important to remember that you cannot kind of expect, you know, it's not it's not for us to drag people in the same direction as us.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think what was always, and I remember this piece of advice, so I'm trying to think where I got it from.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: It might have been from the wonderful Gabby Bernstein at some point.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can only be the best version of yourself, you know how to be in that moment, and know that that in some way is either kind of creating some sort of impact on the people around you, in whatever way, whether they agree with it or they don't agree with it, and that that is that is that that's the only thing that you can hopeful that it will have.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can become the light for other people around you, but only by you doing it for yourself and not for the other people around you, and I think it's so important to remember that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, so important to remember that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you've said that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is something literally that came up yesterday.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I told you I'm in a coaching container at the moment, and what I realize I've been doing as a as a therapist, I often formulate what people say, or kind of just for me, I love to understand the way people do the things they do and behave the way they do, and we kind of touched on it before, or models of relationships that were modeled to us, we often take.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I just find that really fascinating.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been trying very consciously in my relationship to not be the therapist, consciously, and I've had a wild realization in the last few days that what I've really been trying to do is understand my partner's uh beliefs and the way that he thinks at a really kind of deep core level, and that is really kind of impacting uh us understandably.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the coach uh perfectly mirrored to me yesterday well, what do you believe about uh people's journeys?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And like you said, I believe especially as a therapist, you can't force someone into therapy, they have to do it for themselves, they have to be in a place where they are willing and wanting to do it, and it has to be for them.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I haven't been doing is practicing that I have been perhaps pushing and trying to guide my partner into the way that I feel like essentially I've been trying to solve his problem, yeah, because I believe that it will solve some of the issues that we're discussing, yeah, and therefore I've solved the problem.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really can see now is that one, I have been in the therapy mode, not trying to be, but also exactly like you've just said, I've not been allowing him the space to deal with what he needs to deal with by himself if he wants to.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that what comes up for me when you say that is something that I've fallen um prey to so many times and still do, is that something that's not right in my relationship because it's in the relationship means that it's a problem with the other person and not with me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and that oh yeah, that they're doing something wrong and I'm not.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, massively the last few weeks I've had to be like, This is a me problem.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that actually really like if the with all things, what what we have to remember is the only space that we have any agency is with ourselves, you know.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: We only ever have like the ability to change how we're experiencing something through ourselves, not by making somebody else's behavior different.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't like the way somebody's behaving, then it's like, how do you either it's like not it's really not right for you, and you have to do something dramatic about it, or you have to change the way that you respond to it, you have to change your interaction with it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the simple thing, one of the simple things, and it is such a small thing, but it's a simple thing that we were talking about just before was things like my husband has a tendency to start the washing up, fill the bowl.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a small thing, but hey, these things are the things that niggle us sometimes, aren't they?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Start the washing up, puts everything in the bowl of hot water, and then walks away.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's his idea of what washing up, and we'll come back to it later, but he'll come back to it, but he never does, and so you I sometimes call it soaking.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just takes you two minutes to complete the task, and but you know, hang on a minute, but that's what he does, and then I have to come and like put my hand in a cold bowl of dish of water to kind of clear it anyway.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: What I was saying to you before about it was it's how we change our perspective around that, isn't it?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how do we experience that as something that is like, oh my god, that's so annoying.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: To like, oh, there he is, being very him again, and just kind of taking the sting out of it and not getting too caught up in it as a big thing and not allowing it to be something that then really impacts your mood and how you experience the rest of your day.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: You get to choose.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point with that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: You get to choose, and then if you need to talk to your partner about something, you also get to choose in what level you go in with that conversation, in what energy you take into that, you know, not in a like you've done this and I need you to do this and all that sort of stuff, but like, you know, this is happening.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can we talk about it?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And let can we find a way to solve this?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's it's so different, way, isn't it?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And those are choices, choices that we get to to make.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I feel like I have a little lamp there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that, I love that because this is just so normal though, isn't it?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so human, and I love everything that we're talking about because can definitely relate.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't chosen to communicate in the best way at times, and I'm definitely seeing that there is a way, there's a choice, is a way to communicate in an effective way of this is what I need and want from you.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Please can you do that, or please can we explore what this looks like, as opposed to stop putting the plates in and leaving the water, which I definitely done.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And something again that came up yesterday was uh treating your partner the way that you would want to be treated and spoken to, and that was also another uh because I haven't always been choosing to to to communicate in a way that I would want to be communicated with, yes, and all of that allows me to be more compassionate and more empathic and to appreciate just the moments where they're being entirely them.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what's also important as well is to give myself compassion of I'm not gonna get it right all the time, and we're gonna there's gonna be arguments and there's gonna be poor communication, and so I think that's so important as well.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely, I absolutely agree, and you know, it comes back around to a lot of the work that I do is like you know, is helping women to understand how important they are in their own lives and how important it is to know themselves more deeply because when you actually spend some time getting to know yourself and you really give yourself compassion for all your little quirks, all your little ways, all the ways that you are, instead of feeling ashamed of them, instead of trying to ignore them, instead of trying to present yourself as something kind of perfect, somebody that's having it all, doing it all, and actually underneath it all, there's all this kind of like things that you're kind of hoping aren't going to come to the surface that you're not gonna have to see, you're not gonna have to look at.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: When we when we kind of allow ourselves that level of compassion and understanding, that is how we open ourselves up to that deeper level of understanding of all the people around us.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because only when we can show in any situation, we can show ourselves a level, a depth of love, can that deepen in the way that we then interact with others?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and like you've just said as well, loving our partner for the the quirks, which we might not always love all the time, but we we give them that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: We can also give that to ourselves, and something we talked about before was when we're perhaps emotional and we're expressing that however we want to express that, and our partner comes in and they perhaps sometimes think, Oh crap, what have I done, or how is this gonna come back on me?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's also giving ourselves that compassion to be I'm just in my feels, I'm just going through it, it's not about you.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just I need to give myself what I need as well.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for them, well, for us to appreciate, like you said, our quirks like we would the other person.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's such a that's such an important thing for us as women, particularly.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think to be able to express in a in a in a relationship in the way that feels natural and normal for us, instead of creating uh ways of pal making ourselves palatable, acceptable.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we touched on this again privately on how you know all women really through societies, you know, it's so deeply ingrained some of our behaviours from just being women, you know, the culture of the society, it it does place women in a position where we do feel often the need to comply to certain ways of being.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've been had, depending on your upbringing, how it's been modelled to you to behave in a relationship, how it's been modelled to you to be a good woman, a good girl, you know.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to be able to break free of those um identities which are not always helpful for us.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they can be there can be really we can have had very positive role models as well.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is not to say that everybody, you know, and and also just remembering that not one thing is what we're always role modelled by one person, there'll have been other things that we get from everybody around us.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Certain behaviours and traits may come from from our past and not be part of who we're we're gonna be now.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was another thing that we were talking about was yeah, how do you navigate that change within yourself within relationships where you've come into a relationship as one version of yourself, but you know you're evolving, and this comes a little bit back to what we're where we started, wasn't it?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're changing, but there may be experiencing that and wondering where's she going now?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and I have to have um empathy.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have to I have to give it, I have to give it to Matt sometimes.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: How much, and I'm gonna say us because I know that we the work that we do, we really do push ourselves, not push ourselves to grow in it in a in a bad way, but we push through a lot of discomfort, we in the name of growth.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that we we sit with things and we explore them and we sit with how it feels and what's happening, and we make sense of it in in quite a deep way, shock, it's us, it's depth.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: That maybe isn't happening for for other people, and I think that can be quite a difficult dynamic in the relationship because I'm like, don't stop me, I need my voice.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now communicating these, I've never done this.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important to me.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna, you know, stop and I'm not gonna forgive myself for doing all of this stuff, but also that wasn't the place that we were in when we started our relationship, and there wasn't necessarily a conversation of I'm gonna do all this growth, go up here.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me or not?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: It just didn't it just doesn't happen that way, and so I think I I have to have a lot of compassion sometimes.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but how that can impact my partner how rapid that is and how much he does have to put up with what I'm going through, it does come into the relationship.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's not wrong either way for you to want those those things for yourself, um but then it's also kind of I think it is it is okay for us to also have a compassion for the fact that that is a challenge maybe to the other person when you're changing, and that's that's what you know that's kind of where we started with this conversation, but maybe it's a nice way to bring it around, but you know, that whole thing of like you have to do you in the kindest way that you can to yourself and to other people, um, and you can only in that way be somebody who is a beacon or a light to those around you, and they can either decide to be influenced by that in in in a positive way, or they may find that it impacts them, you know, and you can't be responsible for how somebody's gonna respond to that.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you're being integrat in integrity with yourself, that's the key thing.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you have the agency, that's where you have the sovereignty.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, beyond that, you you have to let other people do what they're gonna do, even in our really close relationships, don't we?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm I again I'm so glad that we're talking about this because it's something I would definitely it's something that definitely comes up with my clients in therapy, and I would say exactly the same things.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes actions model well, we've already talked about that.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes all our models impact us and we want to change that, but also the way that we act and behave can be such a bigger mirror and model for people to step up as well.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like you say, they see the light, they see how we're it could be exercising, or we're dealing with our emotions, or whatever it is can be such a good model that encourages the other person so much more than you should do this, or you need to go to therapy, you need to get to the gym.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so interesting how, and but I can also be blind to that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm saying I'm really glad we're talking about this is sometimes I think people think therapists or coaches or whoever we are in our profession have it all together.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say loudly, even though this comes up and I'd be advising and exploring it with my clients, please know that we are all human, and sometimes we just need that reflection and that mirror back to us because we don't see sometimes what's happening in our reality, and that's what I love about therapy that I can give to my clients, but sometimes I need that back as well.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And again, the compassion is we're human, we have our reality, we have all our thoughts, all the things that we're trying to deal with that sometimes we just can't see what we're doing, and it just needs an outside perspective sometimes.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I really, really love that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, this conversation gives small snippets of kind of insight that maybe help people reframe how they're behaving in their relationship today or how they see something going on in the relationship today, and to give people I think the the the thing that really popped into my head then when you were speaking was you know, when we give ourselves permission to go, oh, I just need to focus on me, and actually that's the biggest gift I can give to everybody.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's almost like a relief that you don't have to do it for everybody else, yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that can positively impact everyone else, not that it should be the reason or it should be the motivation, but yeah, that can be the biggest thing for yourself and everyone else, and that's so powerful, it is, and that kind of moment of like, oh, that's a relief.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to carry everybody else, I just have to do the best that I can for me, and that really is the best thing that I can do for everybody.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a huge relief from that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've just sunk in the chair permission.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, and I think on that permission, that note of permission, we should maybe let people go and give um really experience that permission in their lives, yeah, and bring this episode of reframe to a conclusion, yes, which is give yourself permission to take care of yourself and give yourself permission to meet your needs, and then you'll probably find that within your relationship.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what would that look like to give yourself true permission to look after yourself?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, maybe that's the question we leave people with.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go and contemplate what would it really look like?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you, thank you, Danielle.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So good to speak to you, you too.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, take care, everyone.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Meet you soon.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.